To Help the Prince
by RoseFyre
Summary: A trek through the mind of Alice Longbottom…post-Cruciatus.


It's an important day today.

The Prince is coming to visit.

The Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat takes another piece of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, spitting out the old one.

The message must be written.

She quickly takes the wrapper, before the Gnomes can remove it (they like things rather too clean, you know), and pulls out the drawer in the table next to her bed. There are crayons inside, in all the colors of the rainbow, and she removes the Slytherin one. _Yes_, she thinks. _Slytherin today_. She's not quite certain what Slytherin is, but it reminds her of secrets, and she must tell the secret. But not clearly. The Prince must find out part of it for himself. But she can lead him on his way, start him on his Quest. As all good Witches do, of course.

She looks down at her left arm, tracing the patterns.

And then, checking her work, she copies the pattern of scars and moles and freckles from the square inch on the outside of her elbow onto the inside of the wrapper.

Yes. Slytherin is the right color.

The Prince is guarded by the Dragon, a Dragon who gets nervous around the Witch, though she does not know why. Perhaps she could injure the Dragon? Is that why the Dragon is afraid of her, and sad about the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat? Did _she_ make him no longer a Cat?

She does not know why or how, but she knows the spells to kill a Dragon.

She will not kill this one, though, for it guards the Prince on his trips to the Witch's lair, where he must get the secrets so he can find the Castle and rescue the Princess.

Or perhaps _be_ rescued.

_We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz…_

She hums silently, handing the Prince (are all Princes so small, no taller than her waist?) the message, hoping he will know to add it to his map. The dots match closely, carefully, so perfectly fitting with the piece from his last visit, so he can tell where to place it in the big map.

He will have the whole map one day, and then he will find the Castle and the Princess and set her free.

_We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was…_

As he leaves again (for Princes cannot live in the homes of Witches), her humming reminds her of the Goat Girl, with the red hair and the green eyes (or is it green hair and red eyes?), singing the song before meeting the Wizard himself.

The Wizard made her a Witch. _The_ Witch.

The Goat Girl had a child when the Prince was born, she knows, though she does not know how she knows it. She does not remember the Prince's birth, after all, though she knows she was there. Perhaps that was the Princess? Or perhaps not. For how can a Goat Girl and a Woodsman have a Princess?

She cuts off that train of thought, realizing (though unclear how) that the Prince will be coming today. Perhaps the Cat told her? Or, no, he's not the Cat anymore, is he? He's the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat, and he has finished another piece of bubblegum.

He chews rather a lot of bubblegum, but then again, he once was a Cat, and maybe he does not know how to be a Person.

Her map is almost done now. Will the Prince find the Castle soon?

"Mum," the Prince says to her as she sits in her bed, staring at the blank white walls that she decorated before the Gnomes took her pictures away, "I got my Hogwarts letter. I'll make you and Dad proud, I swear it."

He has found the Castle! Perhaps he will rescue the Princess soon. Princes always rescue Princesses, don't they? She thinks they do.

He takes the newest bit of the map, just one of the edges, not even near where he's supposed to go, and puts it in his pocket. Perhaps, when the map is done, she will draw for him, give him other clues.

She will not say anything straight out, but she will do whatever it takes for the Prince to get the message.

The Dragon strokes the head of the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat. She's not certain how he came to be a Person, rather than a Cat, but she thinks it happened at the same time as she was born. Pain, after all, comes with birth, and there is nothing before the pain, so that must be her birth. Was she born after the Prince? She touches that thought and cringes, knowing she is older than the Prince though her birth was after his. Something is wrong there, so wrong she cannot put words to it, cannot find safety near those thoughts.

Her mind jumps back to the Cat, for he is a Cat now, and a Cat he will be. He has been a Person since then (since near her birth), but he was a Cat before.

A Cat raised by a Dragon.

When he was turned into a Person, another Person became a Cat. Everything must be balanced, after all. On the ceiling she sees it, sees an old lady (the Stepmother, perhaps? Or maybe the Fairy Godmother? No, the Fairy Godmother has red hair, like the Goat Girl, who she helped. The Stepmother – the nice Stepmother, for there is no evil – then) turning into a tabby with square markings (like the scar on the outside of her wrist, the place that means the Castle) around the eyes.

She paints some more, and tries to decorate her home, but the Gnomes always take her pictures down, though they let her keep her crayons. The Genie tried to take one once, soon after he appeared, but she screeched until the Head Gnome (Gnome Head?) gave it back.

Witches, after all, must have their crayons.

The Genie lives in a bed, but it once was a lamp, until it was transfiguramated. Is that the word? She thinks that's the word. And if it's not, she knows what she means anyway. Like the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat. Transfiguramated.

Perhaps the Princess is Transfiguramated too? Maybe that's why the Prince hasn't found her yet.

She smiles, happy for her explanation, though the Gnomes hurry about and lock the doors and windows more tightly (not that she's ever tried to leave, because if she does the Prince won't be able to find her) and stare at her and the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat and speak in hushed whispers in Muggle.

"…safe?" she hears.

"Well…after…Potter…finish…cousin…"

"Besides…Aurors…"

The Gnomes nod, and the Gnome Head gives her another crayon, in Hufflepuff-Gryffindor-tinge-of-Ravenclaw-second.

_If ever oh ever a wiz there was, the Wizard of Oz is one because…_

The Prince comes again, sinking into himself as the Dragon pats the Cat.

As they get up to leave, she realizes that she hasn't given him the map yet.

Well, it's not really the map. It used to be the map, but she finished the map, so now it's a drawing of the Fairy Godmother in Hufflepuff, because if the Fairy Godmother helped the Goat Girl, then she'll help the Prince. And Hufflepuff is for help.

She gets up quietly to give it to him, and she finds the Dragon and the Prince and the Genie and one of the Gnomes (but not the Gnome Head) talking to the Woodsman.

It's a different Woodsman, though, because his eyes are green like the Goat Girl's, and he's smaller (like the Prince is small).

But he's the Woodsman, still, and of course he has Animals – Woodland Creatures – though they're different from the ones the Woodsman used to have.

The old Woodsman (or should that be Old Woodsman?) had a Stag and a Dog and a Wolf and a Rat, though she didn't know they were Animals _Before._

Before what?

Before…

Before nothing.

Just _Before_.

This Woodsman has different Animals. He has an Eagle, an Otter, a Falcon, and a Fox. So he must not be the same Woodsman.

She looks more closely at the Falcon – is this the new Goat Girl? But no, her hair is red, but her eyes are brown, and she can't be the Goat Girl, because Goat Girls have green. Green eyes, green hair, green something.

Green.

No, the Falcon is like the Fairy Godmother, and the Otter is like the Stepmother, and the Fox is like the Tinker, who fixes and fixes and never succeeds because the Fairy Godmother can do it better.

And they are gone, and back, and gone, and the Genie is writing while the Gnome brings him lists of wishes.

The Prince comes back, with the Woodsman, but not with the Dragon (perhaps he does not need the Dragon anymore?), and she wonders if maybe she was wrong, if maybe the Prince wasn't meant to rescue the Princess, but was instead meant to rescue the Woodsman, or maybe the Woodsman had to rescue the Princess or even the Prince, because Woodsmen do that, don't they?

"Gran's dead," says the Prince, bravely fighting back tears. "I'm sorry."

The Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat looks for the Dragon, but the Dragon is gone, and somehow she knows the Dragon is gone for good, though she does not know how. For who but a Witch could kill a Dragon?

And she did not kill the Dragon.

And the Genie gives her a picture, but the Gnomes make him put it away and won't let him decorate either, though the Person-Who-Used-to-be-a-Cat seems to like putting his bubble gum onto the pictures to decorate a bit more. _Cats do play with string, and hairballs_, she thinks, and shrugs her shoulders. The Gnomes won't let him put them up, either, and their high-pitched voices gabble on.

She remembers, then, and puts more clues on the wrappers until the Prince returns, but she knows at once that he has finished his Quest (whatever it was) and that he no longer needs her clues.

The Woodsman comes again, and claps the Prince on the shoulder as he tries not to cry (was the Quest so terrible?), and looks at his hands (his claws) and looks like the Goat Girl.

"She's dead, Mum. Professor Lupin, he killed her. I…you're avenged."

She doesn't know what "avenged" means – perhaps he's speaking Muggle? – and she doesn't know if he ever found the Princess, but the Quest is over and he won.

She takes out her newest clue, and looks at it – it is a drawing of the Wizard, in Slytherin-second – and then gives it to the Prince. Because even if he doesn't need the clues anymore, he has still come to see _her_, to see the Witch, and maybe, just maybe, her clues (her magic) will help him with his next Quest.

Whatever that might be.

**oOo**

**Author's Note: **Written in 2006 for Femgenficathon, not compliant with DH.

Original prompt: "I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store." (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

For additional notes (including an explanation of who everyone is and why and how I wrote this piece), please see the second chapter of this fic on Archive of Our Own. These notes are not posted on this website due to the terms of use.


End file.
